


Crybaby

by thereichenbachfalloutboy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, baby!Lock, johnlockchallenges prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereichenbachfalloutboy/pseuds/thereichenbachfalloutboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Johnlockchallenge November gift exchange. Based off of neon-j-box-skurriez prompt "Kidlock. Babylock. Teenlock. Bodyswaplock", from which I obviously chose baby!lock.<br/>------<br/>John Watson was a fussy baby, to say the least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crybaby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neon-j-box-skurriez](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=neon-j-box-skurriez).



> I'm thinking about making another chapter about John and Sherlock's daycare misadventures. Y/N?

John Watson was a fussy baby, to say the least. 

In later years, his mother joked to her friends that he came out screaming and never stopped. 

It wasn't that John was an unhappy baby, far from it. He smiled often enough, and when he did everyone in the room would drop whatever they happened to be doing to coo over his three-toothed grin.

John was happy at  _home_ , with his picture books and fuzzy toys and applesauce, all contained in the three-foot-tall safety that was his playpen.

Once he left the comfort of the flat he shared with his mother, however, he was the loudest, most runny-nosed toddler London had ever seen. Anything or anyone could send him tailspinning into a tantrum, and everything usually did.

It was for this reason that, a year into her thirteen months allowed maternity leave, Jennifer Watson had yet to return to her job as a nurse. Try as she might, she could not leave John at a daycare without him bursting into tears and pulling his saddest, most pitiful face, complete with the protruding bottom lip. 

One day, as John was sitting in his playpen sipping his juice, he heard the doorbell. This, naturally, was not a good thing, because with doorbells came people, and with people came noise, which would inevitably end up in a standard John Watson meltdown. 

Before he'd had much time to dwell upon this new development, John heard the familiar footsteps of his mother, and couldn't help but grin his little infant grin when she came into view. 

She made a face at him as she walked to the door, and John stopped drinking his juice to let out a shriek of amusement. His good mood didn't last long, however, because when she opened the door, a new person came stepped over the threshold.

John Watson did not like new people.

Looking suspiciously at the door over the rim over his sippy-cup, young John weighed his options. If he started to cry, he would most likely be put down for a nap. If he laughed, the woman who was currently talking to his mother would come over and look at him, or, god forbid, _pet him_.

No, John decided that his best bet would be to wait and see what all the fuss was about.

He didn't have to wait very long, because after a brief conversation at the door, the unknown woman, who John could now see was holding some kind of bundle, walked over to the playpen and set the bundle down inside before John's mother gestured for them to go into the kitchen, no doubt to do boring adult things like _talking_ and  _paying taxes._  


Meanwhile, little John was left alone in his playpen with a bundle. 

Naturally, he decided to throw something at it.

Before his cup could leave his hand, however, the bundle started to move. Being too afraid to even squeak, John stared in sheer terror as the fabric was pushed away and a small, dark, curly head of hair appeared.

It wasn't a bundle at all.

It was a boy.

This did nothing to assuage John's fears, however. Because unlike a bundle, a boy could steal your juice. Not that John had conclusive evidence that bundles  _couldn't_  steal your juice, but statistically it seemed that boys were more prone to these things than bundles.

  
The bundle...er, boy... in question had completely shed the scarf he was wrapped up in and was peering curiously at John. Sensing no threat from John, who was busy having a well-contained internal breakdown, the new boy picked up a nearby crayon (John's crayon, mind you) and started scribbling on a piece of construction paper ( _John's_  paper). He continued to ignore John in favor of drawing for a few minutes while John collected himself.

Eventually, John's curiosity outweighed his fear, and he crawled tentatively over to where the boy was concentrating on his picture. He watched over the boy's shoulder for a time while the finishing touches were put on his masterpiece. 

Once the boy had decided that nothing in his picture could be improved upon, he stopped scribbling and noticed John's small breaths on his shoulder. He turned around and, upon notice, John sat back quickly with a thump. 

They held each other's gaze for a moment, just long enough for John to establish that the boy was not going to cause him any immediate harm, before the boy thrust the piece of paper at him with a high-pitched grunt. 

John took the piece of paper and turned it over. On the back was a dark purple mess of scribbles that, while unremarkable to any adult, was the best thing John had ever seen. He cooed with happiness at the gift, and the boy grinned, showing that he only had two teeth to John's three.

Having gained John's trust and blatant adoration, the new boy was allowed to roam around the playpen and play with John's toys. He bypassed the toy ambulance, the dumptruck, and the little multi-colored xylophone with small noises of indifference. 

When the boy seemed to have trouble in finding interest in frankly every toy in the pen, John crawled over to him with one of his favorite picture books, Tails. The book showed various tailed animals and had a different texture for each animal's fur. It was one of John's favorite books.

John sat beside the boy and showed him the front cover of the book, hoping to gain his interest. The boy studied the book for a moment, and then snatched it right out of John's hands. 

This, apparently, was the wrong thing to do, because John's eyes welled up with tears and his bottom lip started to tremble dangerously. It was clear that if no comforting action was taken in the next few seconds, everyone in the house was in for a rough ten minutes of calming him down.

The boy quickly flipped open to the first page (a lion) and rubbed the soft fur of the lion's mane on his new friend's face. It wasn't necessarily a gentle action, and admittedly might have been just to muffle the impending shriek, but John seemed to find the sensation of fake lion fur on his face very pleasant. So pleasant, in fact, that he laughed, and instantly forgave his guest for swiping the book.

Having learned what the wrath of an imminently angry John could do, the boy allowed John to sit next to him, and together they read the book, taking turns feeling the various hides of different fluffy animals, and gurgling happily when they found a texture that was to their liking.

This continued for a few minutes until their mothers walked in from the kitchen, chatting and laughing. They seemed very happy about their children's new friendship, and if John wasn't too busy stroking his hand over the fake panda fur while his companion poked curiously at artificial crocodile scales, he would have heard them arranging another playdate. 

What did grab John's attention, though, was the boy's mother leaning over the rail of the playpen and telling her son that it was time to go. She pointed at the door and the boy scowled, but seemed willing to cooperate anyways.

His mother scooped him up in one arm and wrapped the scarf around him with the other until he was as snug as he had been before. She exchanged a few more words with John's mother, and said, "Wave bye-bye, Sherlock!"

The boy's hand flapped back and forth in John's direction a few times, and John returned the favor as his mother walked the woman to the door.

Overall, the day had been... not as bad as it could have been. John was looking forward to seeing the boy again. Suddenly, John realized that he couldn't have been named "boy", and tried to remember what the woman had called him.

What was it?

It couldn't be John...

It wasn't boy...

It's highly unlikely that it was bye-bye... 

Oh.

His name was Sherlock.

 

A few days later, Sherlock came back to play. The first half an hour was spent in much of the same way as it was before, feeling the various wonderful textures of Tails, with one half of the book on John's lap and one on Sherlock's.

When their mothers came in, John was sure that their playdate was over. Instead, he found himself being lifted up and carried into the kitchen, and he looked over his mother's shoulder to see that Sherlock was following close behind.

When he was buckled into his highchair it occurred to him that it was, in fact, lunchtime. Sherlock got to sit in John's big boy chair, the one that clipped to the adult chairs. John wasn't particularly happy with this, but since Sherlock was new here he decided to let it slide. This time.

A cup of applesauce and several cubes of cheese pulled John out of his rapidly darkening thoughts. He glanced over to see that Sherlock was licking, not biting, a cube of cheese. John frowned and caught Sherlock's attention by squeaking "lamp!" loudly. 

Lamp, actually, was the only word John was able to say. He knew other ones, but nothing seemed to give him more enjoyment than "lamp". Everything was "lamp" now, and although adults might not have been able to realize it, John had mentally made up a language of just one word.

Lamp.

Anyway, this particular "lamp!" was John's way of trying to say "that's not how you eat that, you fucking idiot."

Perhaps John's language may have been a little strong, but the boy took his cheese-eating techniques very seriously.

Sherlock seemed to get the message, and also seemed to find it a little insulting.

Naturally, Sherlock hurled his applesauce at John's face.

In the brief moment before John's reaction, everyone in the room clenched their buttcheeks, waiting for a shriek that was sure to sound ten times worse than a metal screw being dragged across a chalkboard, and could possibly break the sound-barrier.

Instead of unleashing holy hell upon everyone, however, John Watson decided not to get mad.

He got even.

A piece of cheese that John had previously been sucking on was catapulted through the air and, foreshadowing John's almost perfect aim later in life, hit Sherlock square in the forehead.

There was a second terrifying moment of silence when the two toddlers reevaluated each other. John, with applesauce running from his left temple to the right side of his jaw, and Sherlock, with a patch of saliva on his forehead and a gooey piece of cheese in his hand.

After that moment passed, both babies descended into an uncontrollable fit of giggles and both of their mother's breathed a sigh of relief.

After they had been cleaned up and and declared a sort of nonverbal truce, they finished their lunch in relative peace while the adults arranged another playdate later in the week.

When it was time for Sherlock to go, his mother picked him up and re-wrapped him in his scarf to keep the bitterly cold London winter out. This time, John was the first to wave bye-bye. The scarf twitched in a way that signified that Sherlock had returned the favor. 

John was sad when the front door closed behind them, but not the kind of sad that would leave him snivelling in his crib for the rest of the day. If anything, he was more disappointed that he would have to wait another few days to continue his epic puppy-love romance. Which, John reflected as he assembled a Lego masterpiece, wouldn't work at all unless they saw each other every day.

They'd have to work on that.

 

The next time they saw each other, playtime passed without event and lunchtime only brought one airborne piece of cheese.

After the food had been untangled from Sherlock's curls, they went back to the playpen for a short time until their mothers came in to disturb their peaceful "reading" once again.

John went over a mental list of things he did each day, and he concluded that, since Sherlock's mother hadn't wrapped him up and therefore couldn't be leaving, that only meant there was one thing happening here.

Naptime.

John wasn't too upset about that, in fact he quite enjoyed sleeping when he felt he had nothing better to do. They had read Tails cover to cover already, and he was feeling a bit tired after lunch. 

Sherlock, however, looked royally peeved. He crossed his little arms and glared at his mother with rare intensity for a ten-month-old.

Soon, John was snuggled up in his crib and Sherlock was more or less plopped unhappily in the guest bedroom.

It wasn't long before John heard Sherlock turn on the waterworks. He sat up in his crib and used the bars to pull himself into a standing position, peeping over the top bar and through the open door. Sherlock's mother soon appeared in his line of sight, going into the guest room and returning with her sniveling son in her arms. She talked to John's mother for a minute, who gestured to where John was eyeing them.

Apparently the adults thought that sticking Sherlock in John's crib with him would help calm the blue-eyed boy down a bit, because that's where he ended up less than a minute later. John was exceptionally pleased with this new development, but as soon as the crib bars were brought up, Sherlock's face went from "this isn't so bad" to _"HELP ME OH GOD HELP ME I'M GOING TO HAVE AN ANEURYSM IF YOU DON'T GET ME OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW_."

John's life flashed before his eyes (it was relatively short and uninteresting) as Sherlock opened his mouth and let out a howl that made John simultaneously proud and terrified.

Sherlock's mother was immediately there, holding and rocking him into a somewhat quiet state. The next thing the women tried to get Sherlock to sleep was to put them both in the guest bedroom since, it appeared, Sherlock didn't like the bars of the crib due to one unfortunate incident a few months earlier when he'd gotten his head stuck between the bars of the stairs at home. That incident would traumatize him for life and eventually lead to an embarrassing (for a then 27-year-old John) meltdown in a jail cell, but that's a story for another time.

While John sat there, blissfully unaware that in twenty-six years he would be bailing his hysterical friend out of jail for grave robbing (with a perfectly valid purpose, he would be assured), his mother picked him up and placed him in the guest room bed next to a still-fussing Sherlock.

After clipping a baby-barricade to the end of the bed so the toddlers wouldn't push each other off and smoosh their precious little heads on the floor, the adults left them to go back to the other room.

Sherlock seemed significantly quieter now, and after a few minutes, John rolled over to look at him only to see that his friend was fast asleep.

There were tear-streaks drying on the younger boy's cheeks, his eyes were red and his hair was sweaty and clinging to his forehead in some places, but John thought he looked pretty anyways. As John clung to his last wisps of consciousness, he gently patted Sherlock's slumbering head and said, "lamp."

Which, in John's mind, translated to "you're my friend and I love you and I can't wait for all the brilliant adventures we're going to have."

What he didn't know was that falling in love with him would be the best one.


End file.
